The Paris Agent, page 31
* * *
“Hey. Hey you!” A man was at the window to the orderly room, a prisoner with sunken eyes over a gray face beneath his shaved head. He was whispering through the gap where the window had been pushed up to let fresh air in.
We had been waiting in the room for hours, long enough that a light fog blew in over the sunny day then thickened, until the whole camp had become shrouded in cloud. Mary and Wendy had long finished their tea and decided to lie down on the floor to nap, claiming exhaustion after the early start. Josie was in the toilet and had been for some time.
When I noticed the man, I rushed to the window.
“Hello,” I said, in English. The man gave me a sad look.
“I’m RAF. Are you all French?”
“French and British,” I told him. “SOE.”
“Bill!” someone hissed from the yard. “They’re coming.”
He reached up and put his hand over mine on the windowsill and squeezed once.
“They’ll shoot me if they see me talking to you so I have to go but...go well, and thank you for your service,” he said seriously, then squeezed my hand again. “They tried to hide you from us, locking us in our barracks when they moved you through the camp. But a group of us saw you arrive and we all know what...” He broke off, wincing. “I mean, it’s just we all know how this works.”
“I know,” I whispered miserably. “I know what’s coming.”
“I wish there was something I could do but...”
“Thank you,” I whispered back, but as he moved to leave, I caught his hand one more time. “There’s no way out of here, is there? No chance we could escape?”
“I’m sorry, miss,” he said heavily. “The place is crawling with guards. If there was a way out, I’d be long gone.”
There was an announcement over the loudspeakers, and the man gave me one last look then ran away. When Josie returned, she took the seat beside me and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes.
“Did you hear the announcement?” she asked.
“What did they say?”
“The prisoners are being sent back to their barracks and they’ve been told to close the shutters and doors,” Josie said. “I doubt that’s just because of the fog. It won’t be long now, I imagine.”
Outside, the general chatter and movement quickly faded until the whole place seemed to have fallen into an eerie silence.
“Are you scared?” I whispered.
“Not scared. Just sad. I doubt my mother knows I’ve been captured and we parted on difficult terms. I wish I could talk to her one last time—to tell her how sorry I am for everything and to tell her that I love her. I just wish she would be proud of me. I just wish I could make her understand why I chose to take these risks even though I ended up here.”
“She’ll be proud!” I protested. “Of course she’ll be proud of you.”
“But everything is so secretive,” Josie whispered tearfully. “What will she be told about my death? Will they tell her gently? Will she hear of my successes, or just that I was arrested? And Noah? No one even knows that we were in love. Who will think to tell him what became of me?”
“We can’t change any of it now,” I whispered, my throat tight. “I don’t even know where Hughie is. I just have to trust that the truth will find its way to him one day.”
“I wasn’t even crying in there because of what’s about to happen,” she whispered unevenly. “I was crying because I know now I won’t get to hold my Maman or Noah again. I wish I could embrace them one last time.”
“Hold them in your heart at the end,” I said to her softly. “Even when the world around us goes to hell, we can find peace in our minds. You taught me that, Josie.”
“That’s what you’ll do?”
“Giles will be waiting for me on the other side. But—” I broke off, emotion overwhelming me. When I spoke again, I could barely get the words out. “It will be Hughie I think of in the last moments. Like you, I suppose, I’m not so much scared as sad.”
The door opened, and the SS guard was back. He spoke directly to Josie now, giving up altogether on his attempts at English. She replied in German then stood, holding her chin high.
“It’s time to go to the infirmary,” she said, eyes filling with tears again. I rose too and hugged her. The guard barked something at us, and we separated. Wendy and Mary roused and pushed themselves up.
“The infirmary?” Wendy queried, frowning.
“Typhus inoculation,” Josie said lightly.
As we walked along the path toward the “infirmary,” I could smell smoke in the air. The sun was starting to set, but when I looked toward the building ahead of us, I could just make out smoke rising from a chimney at the back of the building, rising up to reach the heavy fog.
* * *
They sat us at a low bench in a corridor. All of the doors leading off the hall were closed until two men in lab coats entered the room. One was younger, maybe only in his twenties. He looked uncertain. The other man was short, with a thick mustache and a shiny bald head.
“One at a time. You’ll come with me,” the bald man told us in clear English. He pointed to Wendy. “You are first.”
“No,” Josie said, raising her chin as she reached to take my hand. Her palm was sweaty and although her voice was strong, she was trembling. “Keep us all together.”
“But you must undress for the exam,” he said impatiently.
“No,” I said. He scowled at me. “We won’t undress unless a female doctor is present. We don’t need to undress for an injection, anyway.”
Wendy and Mary gave us bewildered looks, no doubt surprised to hear our defiance to the German doctors. But the doctor sighed impatiently, then muttered something under his breath. The young man walked out of the hallway to a door at the end and returned quickly carrying a tray. I stared at the tourniquets and the small brown vial, a single syringe and needle beside them.
Hughie, I love you.
The first doctor swept an impatient glance over the four of us.
“Expose your arm then, please.”
I released Josie’s hand and undid the buttons of my blouse. The doctor quickly measured the liquid, drawing it into the syringe, while the younger man moved along the line and applied tourniquets to Wendy and Mary’s arms. After the older had injected Wendy and Mary, the young man moved the tourniquets forward to apply them to me and to Josie.
When the bald man bent toward me with the syringe, I looked him right in the eye.
“I have a son,” I whispered to him. There was a flicker in his eyes. “He’s a baby—not even three years old. My husband is dead. I am all that child has in the whole world.”
“Very sad for your son,” the doctor said stiffly.
I felt the slight pinch as he punctured my skin. My heart began to race as he injected the liquid. Josie reached to take my hand again. Beside us, Wendy and Mary were watching quietly, both calm and both, so far, still well.
The doctor lifted the syringe to prepare it for Josie, then paused. He reached to the tray and picked up the little vial. He shook it, as if checking to see how full it was, then sighed and sat it back down.
“Is the dose not sufficient?” Josie asked him, her voice strained. He pursed his lips.
“You are small. It will be enough.”
“I feel dizzy,” Wendy said quietly.
“It’s just a side effect from the inoculation,” the doctor said dismissively. “Please wait here, we will just be a few minutes.”
He didn’t look back at us as they left the corridor. Josie and I stared at one another.
“Gosh, that’s making me sleepy...” Wendy said, but she trailed off.
“I feel very strange too,” Mary said, but her voice was coming from a long way away.
“Let’s go somewhere lovely together,” Josie whispered. I closed my eyes, and brought to mind an image of my son. I saw him pink and angry when I held him in my arms the first time. I remembered the milky, sweet smell of his cheeks as I nuzzled him close when I’d fed him in the night. I remembered the feel of his soft body collapsing into my arms after his first triumphant steps toward me, the sound of his laughter when I played with him during the months when my ankle was healing.
I’m sorry, Hughie. I love you. I hope you’ll be free. I hope you’ll be happy. I hope one day you’ll find the truth.
As the room began to grow dim, the images faded too, and I used my very last breath just to love my son.
C H A P T E R 29
* * *
JOSIE
Natzweiler-Struthof Camp, Germany
October, 1944
I was still conscious, but my mind was foggy. I could not keep my eyes open.
I was walking down a beach, Maman on one side, Noah on the other. He was holding my hand now. Maman had looped her arm through my elbow. Aunt Quinn was ahead of us, smiling and waving us closer. What does it smell like there, darling? The air—so fresh and crisp, and salty too. What will we eat there, Josie? Ah, we will stop at a kiosk for chips and fish wrapped in newspaper, drizzled with sharp vinegar, and I’ll eat as much as I want but I won’t get sick at all. How do you feel in your heart?
Loved. Wanted. Known.
The fantasy was abruptly interrupted when the doctors came back into the room, talking quietly among themselves. They were speaking German and it was so hard to focus. Two voices, one deep, one higher and breaking with emotion.
“They told me these women were all English or French and had no idea what the injection was. They specifically said we did not need the Gestapo here to do this because there would be no resistance!” The deeper voice dropped to a furious whisper. “I was not expecting to have to argue with them about undressing. I admit—Gustaf, I was thrown by that, and I wasn’t concentrating as I should have been. I think I have given one of them too much—there was not enough left by the time I got to...”
“She is skin and bone,” the higher voice said uncertainly. “Will it be enough to keep her unconscious at least until...?”
The grating sound of metal on metal as the wheel on a trolley squealed, then silence. I was awake enough to wonder what the sounds were, too drowsy to open my eyes at first. Long minutes passed, then the trolley and the footsteps returned. My eyelids were fluttering and the darkness in my mind was receding. The trolley went again. I was barely even dozing now, lethargic but awake. I was still holding Eloise’s hand until they disentangled our fingers. I remembered all over again what was really happening and grief for her might have overwhelmed me.
I hoped she went peacefully. I hoped she was with her husband already, looking down on their baby boy.
I was in an in-between place—my mind wanted to go, but my body kept pulling it back. And was that smoke in the air? No, something so much worse. Something that made my stomach lurch and my heart race.
I opened my eyes abruptly. I was alone in the hallway on the chair, wide awake and panicking. The door opened, and the two men were there, staring at me. The youngest was standing aside from the older again. This time, he looked as if he might cry.
“What do we do?” he said, sounding panicked. He turned to the older man. “There is no more phenol. Doctor, what do we do?”
There was a moment of horrifying silence. They stared at me, I stared at them, and not one of us in that room knew what to do. I flicked my glance toward the other door, the one we’d entered the building through. It was a long hallway—a few dozen feet back to the outside. And even if I made it, where would I go? Escape into the camp?
“Just hurry,” the older doctor said.
“Hurry?” the youngest was alarmed. “But—”
“Just get this over with so we can go!”
Get this over with. My life meant nothing to these men. My murder was one last task they had to tick off before they could leave for the day.
All my life I had been written off, underestimated, forgotten. Wendy and Mary were gone. Eloise, gone. But me? I was still there, and I had no more left to lose. I was in the last moments of my life and nothing I could do now would change the outcome. In some roundabout way, that made me the most powerful person in the room.
A burst of furious adrenaline shook the last of the grogginess from my mind and I shot to my feet and took off toward the door. But the older man bolted toward me, quickly catching up. He scooped me up from behind, tightening his arms around my waist and hoisting me into the air in front of him. I fought with everything I had—throwing arms and legs wildly, screaming for help as he dragged me down toward the younger man, who looked at me, stricken, but did nothing to help.
“Gustaf, for God’s sakes,” the bald doctor hissed. “Open the door!”
The younger man slumped in defeat, and pushed the door open, revealing a steaming hot, cavernous room. At the center of the room was a large brick structure, set beneath a massive chimney that disappeared up into the roof. The structure had four arched doors. Three were locked closed. One was open, and a long metal bed on rails hung out of it.
Behind the bed was a raging fire.
“No!” I cried, and I turned toward the younger man. “Please. Don’t let him do this.”
He was already scrambling toward a cupboard. He threw the door open and started searching, knocking vials all over the place as he went.
“There has to be something—” he stammered. “Anything! Something to just—”
“I told you, it’s all gone,” the older man grunted as he struggled to drag me closer to the furnace.
“We cannot put her in there alive! Awake!”
With every step, I felt the blasting heat grow stronger and I struggled harder, screaming until my throat ached. “Help! Help me!”
“The Kommandant said there must be no witnesses! Get over here! Someone will hear if she keeps shouting.”
The younger man hesitated again, but then he straightened his spine and ran toward me. He caught my upper arm in his fist but held me too loosely, and I tugged my arm out straight away, setting my hand into a claw and swinging wildly toward him. I connected with his face, gouging a deep, angry scratch across his eye and cheek. He cried out, taking a hasty step back, and just then I kicked behind me, managing to inflict enough pain that the bald doctor’s viselike grip around my waist relaxed.
I landed awkwardly... heavily, winding up sprawled on the hot concrete floor, looking up at them, just five or six feet from the furnace.
“I’ll be gone soon,” I said, my voice shaking not with fear, but with fury. “...but I will only be set free into peace. You’ll never know how that feels, not either one of you, because your role in this war will haunt you for eternity.” I was a shy girl, then a quiet woman, but now I was a lioness and my roar became louder, echoing from the walls around me. If I shook, it was only with the injustice of it all. I had moved to a place past fear—even past regret. “One day you will stand before your God and try to justify even this moment and you will fail because there is no justifying what you’ve done. You’ll never even convince yourselves this wasn’t an execution tonight—it was cold-blooded murder.”
I fought with every precious breath left in my body, even though I knew they would overpower me. And as they pushed me down onto the tray, the flames from the furnace burning so hot the pain was already blinding white, I used my very last breath to shout one final war cry.
“Vive la liberty! Vive la France!”
What lay beyond what I could see—the universe, and all of the sparkling stars and planets and galaxies? In the vastness of the one life I had lived, I had given my all to what I knew to be right. I had used my days for good, in every way that I could manage, even when it was hard and even when it didn’t seem enough.
Pain left my mind cloudy but I knew it would be over quickly—I could already feel myself slipping away. I reserved my precious last thoughts for those I had loved the most. For Aunt Quinn, who I so wished I’d had more time with. For my mother, who had given me everything and who had shaped me into a woman who would try to make a better world, even against the odds.
I’m sorry, Maman. I’m so sorry. I love you. Forgive me, please. I hope you’re proud and find happiness.
And for Noah, who had been my hope for the future. With my very last breath, I set out a prayer that he would find a different path without me—a happy path, in freedom and in love, in the world that we had hoped so much to build together.
C H A P T E R 30
* * *
CHARLOTTE
Liverpool
July, 1970
I’m sitting at a long boardroom table surrounded by confused people. Theo is beside me, scribbling absentmindedly on a notepad. Dad sits to my right. He’s slurping the coffee I made in Professor Read’s kitchenette. Opposite us, Drusilla Sallow is sitting with the woman from the photos in her hall table.
We haven’t so much as introduced ourselves yet. As soon as we walked into the meeting room, Helen Elwood handed us each a piece of paper and asked us to sign it before we said a word.
“Harry and I have permission to talk to you all about some incredibly sensitive matters today but what you are about to learn should never leave this room. If you’d all be so kind as to sign this agreement to that effect, we can speak a little more freely.” She’s a tall woman, maybe in her sixties, with short silver hair and an imposingly stiff posture. She collects the agreements, checks each signature carefully, then takes a seat at one end of the long table, opposite Professor Read, who is already scribbling notes at the other end. “Now, if you could just introduce yourselves.” We progress around the table, each of us just saying our names. The woman beside Drusilla Sallow introduces herself as “Dru’s roommate, Dr. Quinn Madison.”
